Urges Public Financing : Brown Decries Time Spent on Fund Raising

Lamenting that he has to raise $3,000 a day if the Democrats are to maintain control of the Legislature, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown told a Los Angeles seminar on money and politics Friday that the only person who can bring about public financing of California campaigns--and thus curtail spiraling campaign costs--is Gov. George Deukmejian.

Brown, who has raised and given away more than $5 million since becoming Speaker in 1980, described himself as “a hustler” in the world of political fund raising, but he insisted he was not enjoying himself.

“We figured out . . . that I have to spend every day of my life raising a minimum of $3,000 a day,” Brown said. “That means almost all of my public time has to be devoted to fund raising. . . . If you don’t think that is a terrible thing to do, you just think of how many people you don’t want to eat with. Well, I have to eat with all of them.

Can’t Get Away From It

“You just think of how many telephone calls you don’t want to make. Well, I have to make all those calls because many of those people potentially are givers. Everything I do--if I ride horses, then I have to invite some potential contributors to go horseback riding with me. If I go to a football or baseball game, I have to take somebody with me. If I am having breakfast, somehow that has to relate to fund raising.”

Brown spoke to a two-day meeting organized by the Citizens Research Foundation of Los Angeles to examine how money affects politics.

Foundation Director Herbert E. Alexander, an expert on campaign financing, blames the soaring costs of campaigns on the “professionalization” of politics. Even candidates for obscure local offices now routinely employ consultants and media and direct-mail experts.

Brown agreed with that assessment and added: “You’re damn right I’m for campaign reform. I want to get out of spending all my time begging and bowing and scraping and laughing at jokes that I’ve heard 1,300 times.”

The Speaker said he thought the huge sums of money now solicited for legislative races made it hard for some public officials to resist pressure from the many special interest groups that give the money.

“So clearly public financing is the way to go,” Brown said, “but it is just as clear that the public is not prepared to support that without a considerable amount of educating and a considerable amount of executive leadership. . . . We have to have a governor who is prepared to say in this state there should be public financing of campaigns. . . . I don’t think George Deukmejian is interested in that.”

Cites Governor’s Veto

Brown cited the governor’s veto last year of a bill that would have imposed a limited form of public financing if voters had approved a campaign reform initiative on the 1984 ballot.

Polls have found that the public is wary of allotting public funds for campaigns--including presidential races, which now are financed by tax dollars in the general election.

Brown called on Deukmejian to explain to the public that a relatively small amount of its taxes would go to campaigns because public financing would permit limits on campaign spending, reducing what is being spent by candidates. About $40 million was spent in California’s 1982 legislative campaigns and even more in the 1984 races, according to preliminary estimates.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that limiting campaign spending would prevent a candidate from spending unlimited amounts of his own money, which, the court said, would be an abridgement of free speech. The court ruled that spending limits were permissible only if candidates have access to public financing.